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wonderful,-For what purpose he supposes the fancy to exist? If a physiologist meets with a part in the human body (as the spleen, e. g.) whose uses he is unable to explain, he never allows himself to pronounce it a superfluity, but takes it for granted that it performs some useful functions in the animal economy which will appear on further knowledge. But, as to the fancy, to judge by the language of most men, it should seem to make a part of our intellectual system simply for the sake of being resisted by the understanding, or of furnishing an object of invective to moralists. If how

ever the reflecting reader is forced to acknowledge that such an estimate is childish and absurd as applied to any intellectual faculty, he may perhaps endeavour to make himself more particularly acquainted with the purposes of this; which in that case he will find as various and as important as those of any other whatsoever. (N. B. I have here used the words Fancy-Imagination-Imaginative power-as equivalent to each other: because it was not necessary for the present purpose to take notice of them in any other relation than that of contradistinction to the formal understanding, or logos.)

MADNESS.

I AM persuaded myself that all madness, or nearly all, takes its rise in some part of the apparatus connected with the digestive organs, most probably in the liver. That the brain is usually supposed to be the seat of madness has arisen from two causes; first, because the brain is universally considered the organ of thought, on which account any disease which disturbs the thinking principle is naturally held to be seated there; secondly, because in dissections of lunatics some lesion or disorganization of the brain has been generally found. Now, as to the first argument, I am of opinion that the brain has been considered the organ of thought chiefly in consequence of the strong direction of the attention to the head arising out of the circumstance that four of the senses, but especially that the two most intellectual of the senses, have their organs seated in that part of our structure. But, if we must use the phrase "organ of thought" at all, on many grounds I should be disposed to say that the brain and the stomach-apparatus through their reciprocal action and reaction jointly make up the compound organ of thought. Secondly, as to the postmortem appearances in the brains of lunatics, no fact is better ascertained in modern pathology than the metastasis, or translation to some near or remote organ, of a disease which had primarily affected the liver: gene

rally from sympathy as it is called, but sometimes in the case of neighbouring organs from absolute pressure when the liver is enlarged. In such cases the sympathetic disorder, which at first is only apparent, soon becomes real and unrealizes the original one. The brain and the lungs are in all cases of diseased liver, I believe, liable beyond any other organs to this morbid sympathy: and, supposing a peculiar mode of diseased liver to be the origin of madness, this particular mode we may assume to have as one part of its peculiarity a more uniform determination than other modes to this general tendency of the liver to generate a secondary disease in the brain. Admitting all this, however, it will be alleged that it merely weakens or destroys the objections to such a theory: but what is the positive argument in its behalf? Î answer— my own long experience, and latterly my own experiments directed to this very question, under the use of opium. For some years opium had simply affected the tone of my stomach: but as this went off and the stomach, by medicine, ad exercise, &c. began to recover its strength; I observed that the liver began to suffer. Under the affection of this organ I was sensible that the genial spirits decayed far more rapidly and deeply; and that with this decay the intellectual faculties had a much closer sympathy. Upon this I tried

some scores of experiments, raising and lowering alternately for periods of 48, 60, 72, or 84 hours the quantity of opium. The result I may perhaps describe more particularly elsewhere: in substance it amounted to this, that as the opium began to take effect, the whole living principle of the intellectual motions began to lose its elasticity, and as it were to petrify; I began to comprehend the tendency of madness to eddy about one idea; and the loss of power to abstract-to hold abstractions steadily before me-or to exercise many other intellectual acts, was in due proportion to the degree in which the biliary system seemed to suffer. It is impossible in a short

compass to describe all that took place: it is sufficient to say that the power of the biliary functions to affect and to modify the power of thinking according to the degree in which they were themselves affected, and in a way far different from the action of good or bad spirits, was prodigious; and gave me a full revelation of the way in which insanity begins to collect and form itself. During all this time my head was unaffected. And I am now more than ever disposed to think that some affection of the liver is in most cases the sole proximate cause, or if not, an indispensable previous condition of madness.

ENGLISH PHYSIOLOGY.

In spite of our great advantages for prosecuting Physiology in England, the whole science is yet in a languishing condition amongst us; and purely for the want of first principles and a more philosophic spirit of study. Perhaps at this moment the best service which could be rendered to this subject would be to translate, and to exhibit in a very luminous aspect, all that Kant has written on the question of teleology or the doctrine of Final Causes. Certainly the prima philosophia of the science must be in a deplorable condition, when it could be supposed that Mr. Lawrence's book brought forward any new arguments in behalf of materialism; or that in the old argument which he has used (an argument proceeding everywhere on a metaphysical confusion which I will notice in a separate paper) there was any thing very formidable.-I have mentioned this book, however, not for the purpose of criticising it generally, but of pointing out one unphilosophic remark of a practical tendency, which may serve to strengthen prejudices that are already too strong. On examining certain African skulls Mr. Lawrence is disposed with many other physiologists to find the indications of inferior intellectual faculties in the bony structure as compared with that of the Caucasian skull. In this conclusion I am dis

posed to coincide: for there is nothing unphilosophic in supposing a scale of intellectual gradations amongst different races of men, any more than in supposing such a gradation amongst the different individuals of the same nation. But it is in a high degree unphilosophic to suppose, that nature ever varies her workmanship for the sake of absolute degradation. Through all differences of degree she pursues some difference of kind, which could not perhaps have co-existed with a higher degree. If therefore the negro intellect be in some of the higher qualities inferior to that of the European, we may reasonably presume that this inferiority exists for the purpose of obtaining some compensatory excellence in lower qualities that could not else have existed. This would be agreeable to the analogy of nature's procedure in other instances: for, by thus creating no absolute and entire superiority in any quarter-but distributing her gifts in parts, and making the several divisions of men the complements as it were of each other, she would point to that same intermixture of all the races with each other which on other grounds, à priori as well as empirical, we have reason to suppose one of her final purposes, and which the course of human events is manifestly preparing.

X. Y. Z.

ON HAMLET'S SOLILOQUY

"TO BE OR NOT TO BE. TO BE or NOT TO BE, that is the question.

THIS celebrated soliloquy has been so highly extolled as a fine specimen of right reasoning proceeding from a vigorous and virtuous mind, that any attempt to treat it as an incongruous assemblage of intruding thoughts, springing from a morbid sensibility, will probably alarm the prejudices of those who have held it in veneration; but as a great outrage against popular opinion has already been committed in speaking of Hamlet as a man suffering mental aberrations, possibly the minor offence, of contrasting a former soliloquy in the same play with that which is the subject of present remark, and pointing attention to the unsoundness of Hamlet's arguments in the latter, as evidence of the progress of his disease, may be considered as adding but little to the original transgression.

When Hamlet is first left alone, and before he is informed of his father's murder, he displays a disrelish of life, but controls his feelings by the pious reflection that,

"

"THE EVERLASTING HAD FIXED HIS
CANON 'GAINST SELF SLAUGHTER.
O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter-God! O

God!

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It may be observed, that Shakspeare has seized the first opportunity to represent Hamlet as a man IMPRESS

ED WITH THE TRUTHS OF REVEALED

RELIGION. At the time Hamlet thus moralized, the theory, which he afterwards cherished, and which ultimately produced mental alienation, had not entered his mind; consequently his opinions on a future state proceeded from a full and free exercise of his intellectual faculties; and as his train of reasoning was sound, so his conclusions are justified by religion and philosophy. How far the same praise can with justice be given to JUNE, 1824.

ม.

his second soliloquy on the same subject, after he had received the awful communication of his father's mur der, remains to be considered. On the first visitation Hamlet promises that the Ghost's commandment "all alone shall live within the book and volume of his brain, unmixed with baser matter;" and so anxious is he to take full revenge on the murderer, that when it is in his power to "do it pat," he rejects the opportunity, lest by killing the king when AT PRAYER he should send him to HEAVEN instead of to HELL.

-And am I then revenged To take him in the purging of his soul, When he is fit and seasoned for his passage?

No.

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AS HELL WHERETO IT GOES.

Those, who are of opinion that Hamlet is in the full enjoyment of a vigorous and virtuous mind throughout the whole play, must needs admit his religious creed to have been a very singular one, since it made the Amighty fix his canon 'gainst self-slaughter, but not against murder, and murder too in malice of the deepest dye, seeking not only to kill the body of the victim, but his soul also. Indeed, the only canon against self-slaughter is that which says "Thou shalt do no murder." This, Hamlet, when he was of sound mind, properly construed to mean,-Thou shalt not take the life of any human being-and not merely-one man shall not kill another. This was a wholesome construction of the commandment-all men being creatures of the same Maker, who holds the lives of all-and the continuance or extinction of any, is not a question between mortal and mortal, or af fecting the right of either, but be 2 T

tween the man and his God, to whom all are due. The canon in terms expressing a commandment against murder, and that commandment having been construed by Hamlet himself in the first soliloquy to extend to self-slaughter, it would be difficult to believe that the same man, if he were in the same state of mind, could subsequently infer that the canon applied to self-slaughter only, and not to murder, in the ordinary acceptation of the word-yet Hamlet comes to this conclusion, and thinks itperfect conscience" to kill his uncle, and that it is "to be damn'd," to let him live any longer:

This is more strange than such a murder is.

Having promised to take venge ance on his uncle, he determines to assume madness, the better to gratify his revenge and to provide for his own safety, of which he is thenceforth remarkably careful, having a strong motive for which to live. Indeed there is no circumstance affecting Hamlet that should prompt him to entertain a thought of self destruction; on the contrary, revenge towards his father's murderer and the usurper of his throne-love for the fair Ophelia, and the ambition of reigning, all concurred to render life desirable. On each of these points Hamlet is very explicit in the course of the play. That he sought revenge, and loved Ophelia, will not be questioned; and that he was anxious to reign, is made perfectly clear by his urging "the stepping between him and his hopes," as one of the causes for which he hated his uncle.

He that hath killed my king and whored

my mother,

Popp'd in between the election and my hopes, Thrown out his angle for my proper life, And with such cozenage, is't not perfect

conscience

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As evidence of Hamlet's wish for life, it has been observed that, when he had an opportunity of dying without being accessary to his own death, when he had nothing to do but, in obedience to his uncle's command, to allow himself to be quietly conveyed to England, where he was sure of suffering death, instead of amusing himself with meditations on mortality, he very wisely consulted the means of self-preservation, turned the tables upon his attendants; and returned to Denmark.

My sea-gown scarf'd about me, in the dark
Up from my cabin,
Grop'd I, to find out them: had my desire;
Finger'd their packet; and in fine withdrew
To mine own room again : making so bold,
MY FEARS forgetting manners, to unseal
Their grand commission, where I found,
Horatio,

A royal knavery; an exact command,-
Larded with many several sorts of reasons
Importing Denmark's health and England's

too,

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* Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who were his school-fellows and friends, who, for anything that appears in the play, were perfectly ignorant of the king's design. This was either the cunning of madness, or a most cold-blooded murder.

anxious for its preservation, is nevertheless found debating on suicide in the third act of the play, as if his condition were so desperate, that he saw no possibility of repose but in the uncertain harbour of death.

Will it be believed, that the studious and virtuous prince, who in the first scene considered this world as an unweeded garden, and looked to other realms for a more blissful state of being, but was deterred from seeking those realins by his steady belief in the revelation which awards punishments for those who shall be guilty of self-slaughter, could be so entirely divested of his religious impressions, and, indeed, of his philosophy, as to utter in the third act a soliloquy in which his very existence in a future state is made a subject of doubt? Will it find belief, that in two acts such a change in the mind of man could be wrought without supervening malady to effect the change! Nay, that the same man could talk of "salvation through prayer," of "heaven," and "hell," " no shriving-time allowed," and afterwards speak of his mother's offence as a deed which from the sacred ceremony of

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CONTRACTION plucks
The very soul: AND SWEET RELIGION

MAKES

A RHAPSODY OF WORDS.

If the images in the soliloquy were connected, and the train of reasoning consistent, still the mere debating of such a question by a scholar, who believed in a "canon 'gainst self-slaughter," and salvation through prayer, would induce an opinion that disease alone could have strained his mind to such a consideration; but when the soliloquy itself shall be found to be false in metaphor, incongruous in reasoning, and impotent in conclusion; when "sweet religion" is indeed "made a rhapsody of words," it must force a belief, that the poet intended to mark the growth of Hamlet's mental disorder, by contrasting the present with the former state of his thoughts in the two soliloquies. It may not be unimportant to call to recollection the period at which Shakspeare wrote the play of Hamlet. Is it probable that an author, in the reign of Elizabeth, when England was straight-. laced in religious bands, should draw

a scholar and a prince confessing that
the Everlasting had fixed his canon
'gainst self-slaughter, but doubting
the truth of revelation, and the ex-
istence of a future state? Would
Shakspeare, considering for whom he
wrote, have put such arguments into
the mouth of a man whom he meant
to represent as in his right senses;
and, that too after he had deviated
from the historical fact, by making
him a Christian instead of a Pagan?
It is confidently contended that he
would not, but, on the contrary, that
he has designedly given an uncon-
nected train of reasoning to Hamlet,
in the following soliloquy, on purpose
to display the unsoundness of his in-
tellect.

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
To be or not to be, that is the question.
The slings and arrows of outrageous for-

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When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause :-There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the whips and scorns

of time,

The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's
contumely,

The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels
bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after
death,-

The undiscover'd country, from whose
bourne

No traveller returns-puzzles the will;
And

have,

makes us rather bear those ills we
Than fly to OTHERS that we know not of!
Thus conscience does make cowards of us
all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought:
And enterprizes of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.

The question is TO BE, that is, to

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